A Zimbabwe ruling party official confirmed Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017 that the Central Committee has fired Mugabe as party leader and replaced him with the recently dismissed Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa.AP Photo - Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi

Defiant Mugabe refuses to step down

ZIMBABWE'S President Robert Mugabe's has refused to end his 37-year rule, despite being sacked as leader of his party.

Mugabe has addressed national TV, where it was expected he would resign from his leadership role.

However the 93-year-old insisted he would preside over next month's ZANU-PF Congress, despite being fired as party leader just hours previously.

Mugabe ended his TV address with the words: "I thank you and good night" without addressing any rumours he was set to resign.

Mugabe's grip on power was broken last week when the military took over, angered at his wife Grace's emergence as the leading candidate to succeed the 93-year-old president.

At a ruling ZANU-PF party meeting earlier in the day, delegates cheered wildly as a party official announced that Mugabe had been ousted as party chief.

He was replaced by former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been Grace Mugabe's chief rival.

In a stunning reversal of allegiances, the party added that it would impeach Mugabe if he did not resign by Monday, Mnangagwa would be its candidate in 2018 elections, and that Grace was expelled from the ZANU-PF ranks.

Robert Mugabe - the world's oldest head of state - remained national president until his official announcement but was overwhelmed by opposition from the generals, much of the Zimbabwean public and from his own party.

"(Mugabe's) wife and close associates have taken advantage of his frail condition to usurp power and loot state resources," party official Obert Mpofu told the ZANU-PF meeting.

Army chief Constantino Chiwenga held further talks with Mugabe on Sunday at State House, the president's official residence.

Official photographs of the meeting showed one officer saluting the president, who stood behind his desk, and several senior officers sitting in a formal room with white sofas and a bright red carpet.

No details of the meeting were released.

Speaking before the meeting, war veterans' leader Chris Mutsvangwa said Mugabe was running out of time to negotiate his departure and should leave the country while he could.

"He's trying to bargain for a dignified exit," he said.

Mutsvangwa followed up with threat to call for street protests if Mugabe refused to go, telling reporters: "We will bring back the crowds and they will do their business."

Mnangagwa, a former state security chief known as "The Crocodile," is now in line to head an interim post-Mugabe unity government that will focus on rebuilding ties with the outside world and stabilising an economy in free fall.

Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers in an outpouring of elation at Mugabe's expected overthrow.

His stunning downfall in just four days is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda's Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo's Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to quit.

SUPPORT EVAPORATING

Men, women and children ran alongside the armoured cars and troops who stepped in this week to oust the man who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.

Under house arrest in his lavish "Blue Roof" compound, Mugabe has refused to stand down even as he has watched his support from party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days.

His nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, told Reuters Mugabe and his wife were "ready to die for what is correct" rather than step down in order to legitimatise what he described as a coup.

But on Harare's streets, few seemed to care about the legal niceties as they heralded a "second liberation" for the former British colony and spoke of their dreams for political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship.

"These are tears of joy," said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. "I've been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last."

The huge crowds in Harare have given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army's intervention, backing its assertion that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, rather than a plain coup, which would entail a diplomatic backlash.

Despite the euphoria, some Mugabe opponents are uneasy about the prominent role played by the military, and fear Zimbabwe might be swapping one army-backed autocrat with another, rather than allowing the people to choose their next leader.

"The real danger of the current situation is that having got their new preferred candidate into State House, the military will want to keep him or her there, no matter what the electorate wills," former education minister David Coltart said.

The United States, a long-time Mugabe critic, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once.